I tried to remove bird poop off the hood late last night, with very little light. That was obviously a big mistake. I apparently took out 2-3 inches of clear coat and some of the paint too. The "clean" spots in the middle is where the bird poop was.

I have a paint touch up kit (paint & clear coat) but I'm not sure if it can be applied to such large areas, any recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

Doesn't look as bad as you think actually. From the pic, it looks like there's just a significant amount of marring installed from the improper wiping of the surface. Basically, you used something that causing a large amount of scratches in a small area resulting in a lack of clarity / haze.

I see you're in NJ, so you're best bet is to contact someone like Phil from DetailersDomain or David from Street Dreams Detail to see if they're willing to fix the small area of damage for you. Shouldn't cost all too much (much cheaper than having it painted!).

So the big question, what were you doing that caused this damage? Specifically what product were you using and what were you using to apply it? As others have sad it's hard to tell if you actually removed all the clear or just scratched it a lot.

Probably a cotton towel or dirty microfiber, and you can clearly see the back and forth motion that was used in the wiping.

yeah, and if that's the case it's likely just marred, not removed, it would take a lot of work by hand to remove all of the clear. Now, if he was wetsanding for some reason then maybe the clear is gone.

thanks everybody for the responses. No wetsanding. I attempted to clean it with a microfiber towel, the scratches were not apparent immediately due to the low light condition. Sadly I scrubbed for a while as the bird poop was not coming off easily. I'll reach out to the detailers mentioned above tomorrow and 328i, I pm'ed you as well.

thanks everybody for the responses. No wetsanding. I attempted to clean it with a microfiber towel, the scratches were not apparent immediately due to the low light condition. Sadly I scrubbed for a while as the bird poop was not coming off easily.